RIM confirms US fire sale of BlackBerry PlayBook, another failure?

A few days ago we gave you the news that the BlackBerry PlayBook was set to be heavily discounted in various retailers over in Canada. Today we now have news that RIM confirms a US fire sale of the BlackBerry PlayBook as well, and it makes you wonder if we have another tablet failure.

According to an article over at Electronista RIM have confirmed that the device will be available in the US for only $199 at a number of different retailers. These include Best Buy, Radio Shack, Staples, Walmart, Office Depot and Office Max. Carriers such as Sprint and Cincinnati Bell all also slashing the price of the tablet PC by $300 and will now begin at $199.

This promotion has been listed as lasting for a limited time, but could last until the same time as that in Canada that is December 1st. In Canada it is thought the lower price will return at some point permanently. At the time of writing the retailers have not altered their prices online, and comes a few weeks after a price reduction to $300.

The PlayBook has recently come under increased competition with the release of the Amazon Kindle Fire, which is even based on the PlayBook’s hardware. It just has a lower 8GB of storage and a different build quality.

RIM has suffered problems with the PlayBook ever since it was launched, with many thinking the device was rushed to the market to compete with the iPad. But the lack of such features as the native email and calendars haven’t helped, and the software update keeps getting delayed.

Total friiggin disaster the playbook sale ads, totally misinterpreted and one thing good that came of all the running between, Best Buy, Staples, Future shop was that I noticed that the android Honeycomb 3.2 was much much better than the playbook and a bigger screen for only $100 more. Go for Lenovo, Motorola Xoom and my pick of the day Samsung Galaxy.